An Amalgam of My Projects, My Favorite Website, and Meadows

As I continue to read, from the text and from your blogs and responses, my ideas about my homepage, and all our 5376 projects, continue to evolve in my thoughts. And in my thoughts I find I am unable to separate my work in this class from my work at CISER, which now includes publishing on the web, outside of my comfort zone. I would have a conniption fit of anxiety from being overwhelmed at all the things I have to do, except for the fact that I want to do them. The challenge is that, where before I was the editor, editing content created from wikis and lists and document libraries, or I was uploading docs and pdfs into websites, or maybe even building SharePoint webpages from templates, now I must write code and create the custom sites our members are asking for.

To do this, I need to learn C sharp…C#...and SharePoint Designer. I need to be able to do the custom work our former programmer once did in order to have the skill sets to both edit webpages and create new ones. CISER once had a programmer for creating webpages, but after he got all of CISER data into SharePoint at no cost, using the Microsoft campus agreement, he “left us” to become assistant registrar at TTU, where he’s working to integrate everything TTU. I get to meet with him for an hour once a week, so I’m not completely alone, plus I have an ace Undergraduate Technology Scholar working with me.

With our new SharePoint system now in place, the idea is that I can now take care of the website without a programmer. However, CISER is pushing the envelope on the technology, with plans for me to work remotely. I’ve got to use every ounce of energy I have to get our system set up for this kind of work by June. I’ll probably be writing about this a lot now. I finally see the beauty of blogs, and that you can ask for help, or even HELP, from your classmates in them. I see the rest of you doing that. You’re using the questioning portion of our blog to ask for help. Brilliant! I was struggling with the idea of blogging until I saw you all getting help in your blogs.

So what does this have to do with our projects? Of course I need to integrate the projects into my work. I need a Homepage and a podcast, and a reason to redesign the artist’s website in SharePoint, and it needs to fit in with my job description to develop content for and communication throughout the CISER web community. I’ll leave the artist out for now.

For my Homepage and Podcast:

CISER is working to create an Alumni Scholar webpage, which will be launched in Feb. 09. This page is going to include a Feature Alumni Scholar section, where one Alumni per quarter will be “featured”. Since I am also an Alumni, I’ll be the test pilot for “defining” the Feature page. The Feature page will be my Homepage, and will include my past bench research and pubs, my CV, my teaching experiences using CISER traveling labs, my current research with CISER in technology, and my research for my Master’s thesis. Using me as a “template” for designing a webpage “template” for Featured Alumni Scholars makes sense because I have participated in all components of the grant, and should have all the outcomes represented on my page. My Featured Scholar Webpage will include everything I wanted on my professional Homepage, and it will include a podcast. More on that, later.

As far as what websites I like the best? I like the webtrailer Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I have a real pet peeve for scrolling on a homepage, more so when I’m doing research than seeking entertainment, and appreciate it fitting in one viewing screen. My brain functions like a map with a homepage, and I need to see it all at once, upfront, in order to navigate the site. I like the beautiful widescreen framing of the group grahic on the Potter homepage, and that the left quick launch and upper menus aren’t overwhelming with information.

I like the visceral sense of expectation you get from the Potter page, that fun and adventure are waiting right here, just because you know these characters well already and their fantastic lives. Meadows describes this phenomenon on page 100 of Pause and Effect when he writes “The similarities and the symbols of these paintings are what lend them a narrative aspect, giving a redundancy and a meaning to what the viewer sees, based on the icons and understandings of their times. This element of redundancy that was touched on in the first chapter [1.4.4] is what allows meaning to be generated.” Meadows give a lot of credit to the feeling generated by viewing any design, referencing Rodin’s response to Rilke when asked about the creative process from the beginning. Meadow’s sums up Rodin’s response, saying “This is to say that the metaphor for any form of design, be it interactive, narrative, or graphic, can be guided, but that it is the ultimate judgement of the feeling (not the plan) that makes for a success” (102).

I’d like to create something similar to a still-life of the Potter website as a template for all the Alumni Scholar Feature webpages. These pages won’t be homepages for every Alumni Scholar, but they could be. And I like the idea of making a widescreen of visual narrative about the Featured Alumni, using old photos we have of Alumni Scholars working in labs and classrooms, presenting at meetings, and having fun attending CISER social events. SharePoint has a watermark function I’d like to try out for something just like this. I know right now there won’t be any ingenious interactivity/participation on the Feature Scholar Webpage as on the Potter page, although there will be a link on every Feature Alumni Scholar Webpage to CISER’s official Facebook Group page, and there will be a podcast on every Alumni Scholar Fearture Webpage that we hope to be able to make pretty fantastical. The Facebook Group is for the purpose of tracking Alumni Scholars for our annual report narrative. Our communication with alumns has increased over 100% since we launched the group last semester, and we want to feature it more.

Lastly, the podcast…CISER wants to record a three-way conference meeting, with video and audio from each of the 3 locations, and put it on the web. The CISER technology component of this grant is dedicated to establishing the ability for members to work remotely, with remote workers having full access to databases (SharePoint), and full participation with the onsite members. CISER needs to document the latter, hence the podcast. I’m supposed to get this project off the ground, by June. My job is to lead the discussion between the current undergraduate Scholars (Location 1: sitting round table in their common Room 12 in Biology’s basement) and the Featured Alumni Scholar (Location 2: at the location of their choice) from my location (3). And CISER wants me to lead the conferences from my locations on the west coast, where I’ll be traveling and working remotely from now until indefinitely. They want beautiful shots of redwoods, beaches, etc., in my background while I lead the discussion. And I have to document how I do all this.

Thinking about how to produce such a thing reminds me of Meadows text about graphics in terms of first, second, and third person, a new concept for me. I hadn’t considered visuals as narrative quite so literally…I have a feeling I’m going to be thinking about this a lot.

This is an amazing assignment, handed to me yesterday, Jan 31. I don’t expect to complete our podcast assignment with one of these CISER productions, but I sure would like to hear your ideas about this assignment. What do you think?